Doing user research is like eating healthy food, exercising, and getting an annual checkup. Almost everyone recognizes that it’s good to do these things, but many people fail to do them. Similarly, many companies neglect to do user research. Why? In this column, I’ll discuss the most common excuses I hear from companies and project teams that don’t conduct user research—and I’ll provide solutions to overcome them.

After being in the UX industry for years, I’ve discovered 2 important things:
1.Product designers and UX pros think differently than other humans
2.Highly skilled product designers and UX pros see problems that need to be solved, not features that need to be added

When a client asks for a feature, rather than responding, “Sure! Let me just toss that in here!”, an experienced product designer says, “That’s great feedback! Can you explain how you’d apply that feature and how it’d improve your experience?”

It’s in this context that you need to shape your product releases—not with a feature checklist, but by marrying business goals with user needs, and working to define an experience that engages your target audience and drives them to action. At the same time, you need to be prepared to learn from real world usage and continue to adapt your product as needed to capture, sustain, and grow your customer base.

“Criticism may be based on opinion, but that’s what makes it valuable. It gives us a taste of why people will eventually love or hate our work.”

This is Katie Dill, Airbnb's Head of Experience Design. Previously, she helped founders shape products and UX at Greenstart, and ascended from analyst to creative director at Frog Design. She also teaches graduate industrial design classes at CCA. Needless to say, she’s been on the giving and receiving end of design and product feedback countless times — but she thinks the process could almost always be much better.

I hate this type of question and to me they don’t make sense. It’s like asking a kid who he loves more — mom or dad. Or even worse, trying to figure out which came first — the chicken or the egg? But unlike the age old causality dilemma, this question has an answer.

Imagine you are standing at an intersection of a dusty road in the middle of nowhere. You have to make a choice regarding which direction to go. Do you flip a coin? Follow an instinct? Check for footprints from earlier travelers? Stand in one place until someone else comes by to provide insight?

I was talking to someone about how UX works at Marketo and how it is different than other places. At Marketo, the UX team has specific responsibilities and ownership within the process of development that differs from the norm.

Product Management defines WHAT the feature needs to do. They define it’s required capabilities. PM does not however, provide wire-frames or storyboards or any details of implementation. User Experience defines HOW those requirements are manifested in the system. UX defines how it works and what it looks like. We provide specific details around how the system should behave under various inputs and constraints. We define the edge cases. Let’s call this model “UX designed“.